NINETEEN months old!

Our sweet toddler is just toddling along! This was a really fun month with Sara. After a phase with a lot of whining and neediness, Sara has been a bit more independent (as far as year-and-a-half-year-olds go) and a bit less temperamental. Maybe it's because her molars are finally breaking through; maybe it's because her language skills have improved; maybe it's because her mama has better learned to meet Sara's toddler needs. Whatever the case, I'm embracing this new phase and hoping it lasts a while!

Even though no one else can really understand her, Sara is now starting to talk in sentences. Most of them start with "I want (ahwa)..." I keep working on "please," but I don't hear it very often just yet.

Sara loves to climb and has gotten a lot better at it. She regularly climbs her way onto the couches now and will climb the ladders at the playground with some assistance. She also loves to try to jump, but she doesn't achieve liftoff yet.

Sara has little patience for fine-motor, crafty kind of stuff. I try to get her to scribble, and she'll do it for a couple of seconds, but that's about it. She'd much rather look at books or transfer objects from container to container. She also loves to do all the hand motions for "The Wheels on the Bus."

She still loves her banana more than anything, but Baby Girl can, as Larry likes to say, "put away the groceries." She's not a big veggie fan, unfortunately, but otherwise the girl can certainly eat!

Overall, it's sad to watch babyhood falling away, but toddlerhood is a whole lot of fun. We love our baby girl!